Committee 'has Buckley's chance of funding'

It is 200 years since William Buckley
escaped to live with Aborigines.

A committee established to promote the bicentenary of the escape of "wild white man" William Buckley from a Sorrento penal settlement has called for more financial support from the State Government, saying it has little chance of being able to deliver a proposed program of events without funding.

Buckley, who has been cast in recent years as a "father of reconciliation" between Aborigines and white settlers, was an English convict who escaped from a penal camp at Sorrento on December 27, 1803, and spent the next 32 years living with the Aborigines in the western district of Victoria before rejoining European society.

The Friends of William Buckley group, which was established this year, has already, with sponsorship from Alcoa, launched a kit of educational resources for schools in the Geelong region and placed large cardboard figures of Buckley at libraries to spark interest in his story. There are also private plans to hold an art exhibition at a St Leonards gallery.

But committee member and executive director of Geelong Otway Tourism, Roger Grant, said the range of planned activities had to be curtailed after attempts to gain funding have become bogged down in bureaucratic process.

He said that the lack of funding meant a proposed series of one-man shows and an art competition and exhibition may not go ahead. Plans to expand the William Buckley Heritage Trail - a series of signs set up in the Geelong region identifying sites of significance to Buckley's story that was launched in 2000 - from six to 36 sites were also in doubt. A proposal to build a memorial for Buckley at St Leonards had been delayed.

"It's history repeating itself," Mr Grant said. "There was a huge reluctance by the government of the day to give Buckley a pardon and to give him any recognition at all and here we are, on the eve of the bicentenary, and basically nothing's changed.

"It looks like we've got Buckley's hope of being able to deliver something that. . . I think is of national significance."

While several MPs, - particularly the member for Bellarine, Lisa Neville - had supported the plans, Mr Grant said the group was "just being ground down by bureaucracy".

A spokesman for the Minister for Regional Development, John Brumby, said that the Department of Regional Development Victoria was working with Ms Neville to "overcome the difficulties this group is facing".

Ms Neville said she had organised a meeting with the committee members and four councils - the City of Greater Geelong, Surf Coast Shire, Colac Otway Shire and the Borough of Queenscliff - about applying for funding from the Department of Regional Development to expand the heritage trail but no application had yet been received. "We're now chasing up all the councils again," she said.

Ms Neville said the State Government was working to simplify the process under which community groups such as the Friends of William Buckley could make applications for funding, and had established the Department of Victorian Community to help.. "But it is going to take time to get there," she said.